Tag Archives: Google Docs

Add-ons was just released today for Google Docs. I found a music note add-on that you may find useful. To use it:

Create a new Google Doc (or open an old one)

Select Add-ons

Select Get add-ons

Scroll down (or do a search for) and select VexTab Music Notation

Click Free

Click Accept

You then click back to add-ons within your Google Docs and you’ll see the VexTab add-on.

When you add it, you can then edit notes, timing etc. The VexTab add-on lets you render standard music notation, drum notation, and guitar tablature in your documents. You can find out more about VexTab by going totheir site.
It looks a little funky at first, but if you just change up some things in the green editing area, and have a play, you’ll see how it works. Pretty cool!

Happy Composing!

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In my previous post, I listed the steps to create awesome, virtual flipping books using Google Docs and the website Flipsnack. Here is the most thorough step-by-step guide you’ll ever need for you and your students to embark on this excellent endeavor.

Student Examples

The links below are examples from grade 3 students at Singapore American School.
Feel free to leave them a comment!

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There’s a great website called Flipsnack that allows you to create really slick looking flip books from any pdf or jpg file that you have. I use this with third graders so they can publish their writing from Google Docs to their Blogs in a new and fun way.

Below are the steps – you can also click hereto view full-page directions.

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Here’s a very slick new tool that allows students and teachers to share a Google Doc or Presentation, record themselves along side the presentation or doc and email or embed the video on a blog. It’s called Movenote, and it’s free.

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This is a great project for elementary and beyond. Report/bio/non-fiction writing in a Google Doc with an embedded QR code that links to the student reading excepts from their research. You may print out book style when complete, or create on online flip book using sites such as Issuu, Youblisher or Flipsnack.

Learn how to easily record your voice, generate a corresponding QR code and make your Google Doc come alive!

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I cannot tell you how excited my 5th graders were to write today. Each of our students in grade 5, for the first time, now has their own Google Apps account and today we dove straight in to collaborating on a personal narrative piece they had previously written in Microsoft Word. The process was as follows: Upload, share, advise, revise.

Upload

After logging in, the students first uploaded their document into Google Docs, named it, and read over it to make sure that everything looked good.

Share

The students then added their collaboration partner by giving them the ability to view and comment on their document.

At this point, they also added their teacher.

Advise

Each student then went back to their Google Docs account and found a new document from their friend waiting for them. After opening it, they were then able to read through and make comments.

Revise

The best part of the day was seeing how enthusiastic the kids were to go back in to fix and improve their writing. After the students made changes to their original piece, they asked if they could add more editors to their document who could review and make comments on their piece. Here’s a short, raw video of part of the process. My favorite part is at 1:25 when a student enthusiastically yells out to the class, “Everybody, everybody, get on mine!”

Google Docs has recently partnered with Weekly Reader to come up with ways to help teachers teach collaborative writing to students. Two of the many features of Google Docs is the ability to have multiple people working on the same document simultaneously, and also, the intuitive ability to insert comments into a document. If you are new to Google Docs, they’ve broken this process down into four steps:

EdTechIdeas: Google Docs is great for students to write collaborative poems, stories, book reports, movie scripts, essays, and more. Students can “hand in” their writing and the teacher can make comments and “pass it back” to the student for corrections and improvements. The nice thing about using comments is that editors can see who added what, as a time and date stamp, along with the users name is displayed along with each comment. Going further, a revision history can be accessed for any document to see who did what when.

Part of Learningscience.org, this is great place to find games and activities that help students learn about and develop understanding of the fundamental concepts of principles of motions and forces. There are 17 different activities listed here with explanations about what each learning tool teaches. EdTechIdeas: With high interest games like Simple Machines, Energy Skate Park (very cool), Galileo Drops the Ball, and Projectile Motion (Blast a Buick out of a canon – who wouldn’t like that?), Motion and Forces really come alive and are made understandable for students.

The Story Home is a site where students can go to hear free audio stories of original and classic tales. You can search for specific stories, or choose from the many different categories (animal stories, fairy tales, holiday stories, and a bunch more). EdTechIdeas: The Story Home would be a great listening center. If you’re lacking in computers, subscribe to the podcast, put some stories on an iPod, add one of these, and you’re good to go. Have students write in their own words what they listened to. Re-write the ending to a story. After listening to a few stories, have your students record their own stories (original or classic) and turn them into podcasts for all to enjoy.